Obama Wins Mordor and Hogwarts Primary

The results are in! A recent primary, held in Mordor and at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, indicates that there's no stopping Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton, a member of the very lame Hufflepuff House, is doomed.

What is a Wubble?

What is a Wubble, you ask? Well, according to creators Henry, Kengo, Casey, and Kevin Wubbles are, in fact, cooler than unicorns and basically rain drops with an attitude. Wubbles, from the planet Plubb, are known to discuss critical topics of the day, including weapons of mass destruction, pool etiquette, and necessary lotions at the beach. If anyone is interested in knowing what a rain drop does on a given day, I highly recommend checking out wubblecomics.com.

WebKit Buttons and Banners

The rendering engine behind Apple's Safari web browser is called WebKit. If you're the adventurous type or like contributing to open-source software projects by submitting bugs, feel free to download the latest nightly build of WebKit. It makes Safari wicked fast. I understand that WebKit is not a browser, which are often marketed as the greatest things on the planet. Regardless, I imagine there is still a great deal of pride in the WebKit project knowing that many popular browsers and mobile platforms use the code. In this spirit, I have created WebKit banners/buttons that anyone may download and use to help "get the word out." Click on the image (above right) to preview the buttonny goodness.

Download the WebKit banners/buttons

Will Ryan Giggs Be the Next Sir Alex?

English Premier League (EPL) football team, Manchester United appears set to win the EPL this year, having one more game against Wigan. Another exciting event, however, may perhaps trump the Red Devils' celebration, at least for one player. Winger, Ryan Giggs, is about to reach a 759-game milestone in the Champions League final on May 21st, surpassing club director Bobby Charlton's record number of appearances for the club.

The 34 year old Welshman would certainly end his season in style by scoring 100 goals in 519 league appearances, topping the club's current number of appearances record, and winning the Premiership and Champions League. Will Giggs call it quits after the 2009 season? There is also speculation that Giggs might replace the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson, when the current manager decides to retire. I still think about that amazing day, when I had my picture taken with Ryan Giggs. Ahh, the memories.

Feel free to read more:

• Giggs is underrated - Ferdinand
• Giggs aiming for coaching future

P.S. Chelsea can sod off.

IE Tab Extension: A Web Compliance Band-aid

The talented geeks over at Lifehacker recently posted an interesting article on how to "Get Firefox's Best Features in Internet Explorer". The article should be helpful to those [poor] people who either prefer IE [gasp!] or must use IE as their web browser. Adam reveals how to add bookmark syncing, integrated spell-checking, session management, keyword bookmarks, ad blocking, inline search, and undo-closed-tab functionality to Microsoft's proprietary, web browser.

If IE is your bag, then fine..it's your choice. But what I found most disturbing, as one who dabbles in web design and pays homage to the web standards Gods, was the number of commenters who suggested using the IE Tab extension for Mozilla Firefox to deal with those "pesky" web sites that do not function/render properly in browsers other than IE. Jesus Quincy Adams. Not one of the comments suggested sending feedback to whomever, informing the [ignorant] company/business that people do use other web browsers.

IE Tab is a clever, Firefox addon capable of opening any web page in a new Firefox tab, but actually uses Internet Explorer, behind the scenes, to render the page. This is quite useful, especially for web developers/designers who use Firefox as a standard [which is good] and are too lazy to open IE as a standalone program and shuffle between windows. You know who you are. I want to be clear. I am not saying IE Tab is rubbish, but concerned that users are implementing its use to simply "brush the CSS compliance problem under the rug."

In reality, the IE Tab extension for Mozilla Firefox is a band-aid for a much bigger problem.

IE is used by about 75% of those who browse the Web. Firefox users should feel free to use IE Tab, but also let the company/webmaster know that it is unacceptable to provide functionality on a public site that does not work for 25% of those who browse the Web. To be fair, a site that works properly in IE, but not so well in other browsers, is probably not the fault of the designer, but the uninformed company/business who paid the web-design company to make it that way. One would hope that a web design group would consistently beat the silly, uneducated client over the head with Jeffrey Zeldman's book, Designing with Web Standards and they would ultimately "see the light" in a dream also involving $1.09 gas prices and checkout-aisle magazines not plastered with sappy images of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, or Vince Vaughn. But unfortunately, we don't live in that world, do we.

If you are a Firefox, Opera, Safari, Camino, SeaMonkey, or Flock user and come across a website that does not function or render properly, do yourself and the rest of the web community a favor and take the time to send a polite note to, harshly criticize, fart in the general direction of, bitch slap, or pistol whip the responsible company, designer, or webmaster. Despite what Microsoft wants you to believe, IE is not the only browser in town.